Heart of the Staff - Complete Series

by Carol Marrs Phipps

  They came to light on a long broad limb which gave them a good view of the countryside. Hubba Hubba's legs went weak, letting him collapse into a blubbery heap across the branch. There he remained, gasping and panting until he noticed the sparrows staring at him. “Right,” he said, straightening up at once. “Just needed a few moments' rest, there.” He paced up and down the limb as Chirp, Tweet and Squeak fluttered and hopped to keep up. He paused here and there to look out over the village. “We've got a problem here, I want to tell you,” he said. “Just how am I to find something to eat without getting myself killed?”

  “Look yonder,” tweeted Squeak, as he flittered close and nodded to the road leading out of town, where a sign which read, “Sweet Corn for Sale,” was planted in front of a dilapidated old wagon.

  “Take me out of this tree,” croaked Hubba Hubba. At once they flew and lit close to the corn wagon. He quickly unhitched himself from the sparrows and tied them securely to a nearby bush. He rushed to the wagon to find the vendor preparing to leave for the evening. For a moment, he panicked. He sped around the wagon with a frantic two footed trot to where the vendor was hitching his unicorn. “Oh gracious sir, please!” he cawed out, quite out of breath. “Before you go, could I have just one ear of your marvelous sweet corn? I've traveled a very long way without the slightest morsel of food and I'm nearly delirious with hunger.”

  The corn peddler pushed back his old felt hat above his look of astonishment and scratched his head. “A fat talking crow,” he said. “You're the politest one varmint I ever saw, for all your brassy nerve, or else you're the Pitmaster's pet. Don't you know that I put scarecrows in my fields to keep beggars like you out of my corn? And here you come, politely asking me to give it to you. Now, if that don't beat the bugs a-fightin', I certainly don't know what does.”

  Hubba Hubba stared at the vendor in confusion. He had no idea whether the old fellow meant yes or no, and he certainly had no idea what kind of crow was named 'Scare,' but he did know that the old coot was laughing at him and he did not like it one bit. Just as he decided to try to snatch an ear of the corn and run, the vendor stopped laughing.

  “Here crow,” said the fellow, as he handed him a small hard ear. “If you can actually ask for it, I reckon I'll give you one, but don't let me catch you anywhere near my fields. If I do, hit will be the last thing you ever do. I'm right keen with a bow. Understand?”

  Hubba Hubba understood that much, all right. He stood by his ear of corn, nodding politely while the peddler mounted his wagon and gathered his reins. “You're amazing, crow,” said the peddler as he gave his reins a shake. “That's the only reason you got the corn. I don't buy your story at all. You're much too fat to have gone without food for even a day. I've never seen anything with feathers as fat as you are.”

  Hubba Hubba stiffened at the insult. He fumed and mumbled angrily to himself as he put his foot on his ear of corn. “If I weren't so hungry, I'd show that old gaffer a thing or two, I would,” he hissed as he ruffled his feathers with a shake of his head, before sleeking down and pecking at his little meal.

  He gulped down several large mouths full before he paused to consider what he was swallowing. He looked at the ear suspiciously, rolling it over this way and that. He pecked, twisted off and swallowed another kernel. “Ugh!” he croaked. “Just where is the sweet in this sweet corn?”

  Chirp, Tweet and Squeak looked up at once from what they had found to eat to see if an answer was expected of them. It was quite plain that Hubba Hubba was merely ranting, so they went back to their respective morsels. Chirp had gotten hold of a slimy, foul-smelling earthworm, twisting and writhing this way and that at one end, while he gulped and shook and swallowed down the other end.

  “How revolting!” said Hubba Hubba, as he felt his stomach churn. He looked at Tweet to see him crunching the middle of a centipede which was hopelessly waving its rows of legs as it snapped its pincers. Hubba Hubba ruffled his feathers and shook his head as a string of slobber flung from his beak. He refused to look at Squeak, but suddenly an urge seized him and he peeked anyway, to see him swallowing head first a huge cockroach, with its stinking white insides squeezing out its behind as it kicked its hind pair of legs, on its way out of sight.

  It was all much more than poor Hubba Hubba could handle. He turned his back to the sparrows and became wretchedly sick, heaving up all over the ear of unsweet sweet corn at his feet. Soon his insides were calm again, at least as much as possible, though his eyes still watered. With an apprehensive glance about, he saw that they had finished eating their repulsive tidbits. “Up slaves,” he commanded. “And keep your eyes open for a nice cozy tree to roost in.”

  Chapter 40

  “I want you two to get off your lazy butts and clean up this place. Right now!” snarled Ugleeuh, as she stumped between Rose and Lukus on her way to the kitchen. “All you two have done for the past three days is loll about and gorge yourselves, and it's past time you did something grateful or productive to pay back that debt you owe me for saving your worthless lives.”

  “Now that Hubba Hubba's gone, she's worse than ever,” said Rose.

  “Say!” said Lukus. “Isn't that how she justified using us to buy her freedom?”

  “What?”

  “Doing so would knock off our debt, right? So why are we still beholden to her?”

  “Well it appears she's forgotten, Lukus.”

  They sat silently for a spell. Suddenly Rose sat bolt upright and lunged at Lukus's ear with cupped hands. “We have to get out of here immediately,” she said, mouthing her words almost inaudibly. “We've got to get Ugleeuh to throw us out, right now. Got me?”

  Lukus grinned hugely and hurled his bowl of sukered porridge across the room, smashing it gloriously upon the breadth of the far wall. Rose heaved her own bowlful, superimposing more streaks of cascading grey goo and thoroughly plastering Ugleeuh as she stepped in to see what all the commotion was about. Rose and Lukus burst out with hysterical laughter, pointing at her as they stumbled about holding their sides.

  “That's it!” she roared as she uncovered an eye with the heel of her hand. “I'll not tolerate another moment of this outrageous behavior and insubordination. Out! Outside with you! And don't you dare come back in here until I get you!”

  “What?” said Lukus. “There's not a thing to do outside. Why thanks to you, we don't even have our unicorns to ride anymore. Just how long do you expect us to hang about out there, anyway?”

  “Besides,” said Rose, “being hostages for ransom changes our obligations to you, or have you forgotten?”

  “I forget nothing, girlie!” yowled Ugleeuh. “You owe me! Hostages or not, you two royal whelps still owe me for saving your lives, as a matter of honor if nothing else. But perhaps the mighty brenin and brenhines of Niarg didn't instruct their insolent offspring about the virtues of being honorable. No matter though. You shall learn it now. Your parents will thank me later, if they have enough character to notice the improvement. Now, get out of here. Get acquainted with the woods. It'll keep you from getting on my nerves any worse than you are already.”

  “But we don't know our way around in the forest or what might be in there,” said Rose. “And how will we know when to come back?”

  “Yea,” said Lukus. “What if we get attacked by some horrible monster?”

  “The worst monsters in there will be the two of you. Now get out. I'll come for you when I have supper. Until then, stay away, unless you want to be part of some delightfully entertaining accident. And don't think you can escape from me either. Thanks to your dear Grandfather Razzmorten, this forest has a curse on it that prevents any person who enters from leaving. If you dare to leave here without being released from his vicious hex, you'll die.”

  “Ha,” said Lukus. “You expect us to swallow that when Hubba Hubba just flew out of here with your blessing?”

  “Clean out your ears, boy. I said any person. Creatures come and go as they please, unless I intervene, of cour
se.”

  With that, they left the house and found the path that Ugleeuh had taken them on when she had shown them the chocolate eating dragon. They were well away from the house before either of them spoke. “Looks like your idea worked, Rose,” said Lukus. “It's too bad that we're trapped here by a curse and can't escape after all. We'll probably have to wait for Mother and Father to cave in to her demands before...”

  “Stop Lukus. Something hit me.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Before we came outside. I want to ask you something that occurred to me back inside, that was probably way too dangerous to be overheard.”

  “Well, what?”

  “Does Bailitheoir Cailli ring any bells? Remember anyone talking about Bailitheoir Cailli, back in Niarg, such as Mother and Father?”

  “Kind of seems like it. That's Elvish, isn't it?”

  “So what do you remember Lukus?”

  “Wasn't there some plot against the throne which involved Bailitheoir Calli in some way?”

  “Exactly. I think it means 'Collector Witch,' if I'm not clear wrong. It was a woman, and she tried to take over Niarg by plotting to murder Mother and Father. I think the Elves could've been the ones who found her out. Anyway, she was exiled, I'm almost certain.”

  “Do you think that...?”

  “What's got me to thinking has been Ugleeuh saying: 'You owe me.' She's told us that, just now in fact, and Hubba Hubba...”

  “Yea, and the dragon...and the dorchadas heathen. Remember?”

  “Seems like her cow, too. I'm pretty sure she did. Anyway Lukus, this Bailitheoir Calli, the Collector Witch, I think got her name because she had a habit of claiming that all sorts of parties owed her. She was supposed to have said that her reason for trying to kill Mother and Father was that they owed her the kingdom. Owed her, Lukus.”

  “So Bailitheoir Calli is Ugleeuh.”

  “I wonder. Putting her away in these woods always seemed a bit much for just getting a knight all sukered up, even if it did get him killed. But if Ugleeuh tried to kill Mother and Father at the same time... Am I just plain crazy?”

  “No Rose. I think you're near enough right that if Ugleeuh uses us to get out, she might be a real danger to Mother and Father and probably all of us. Whether you're right or wrong, you've figured out enough that it's a big risk to let her out of here.”

  “Well I'm glad that's how it looks to you, because that's how it seems to me.”

  “So what do we do? We're outside by ourselves. Do we go back, or do we count this as a head start and run for it? And what about Grandfather's spell? How do we get out?”

  “Some way. Without a doubt, Lukus,” said Rose fiercely. “There has to be some way out of here and we're going to find it. We're not going back to Auntie's cabin. No way.”

  “All right Rose. I'm with you all the way, but what are we going to do about food and shelter?” He stepped off the path and picked up the end of a licorice vine trailing down from the branches of a peppermint tree and pointed up into the wide reaching boughs above him. “We could build a tree house, maybe, but if we have to eat junk like this tooth killer vine, I don't know how long we'll last. Besides, what really scares me is that Ugleeuh said she could find us at any time she wants us. Just how do we evade her until we're rescued?”

  “I don't know, Lukus. We'll just have to deal with things one at a time as we did when we began this mad quest. Where's your determination?”

  “Right here. Where's your head? We've got to think about some things right quick, if we're not going back. She could come hunting us any minute now, any time between now and supper. If we don't know where we're going yet, at least we should be moving for all we're worth.” He was already underway, pumping out urgent strides down the path toward the chocolate volcano, forcing Rose to jog to catch up.

  “Very well,” she said between breaths. “Where do you suggest we get to?”

  “You tell me. It had better be a good long way off, though,” he said, throwing his words over his shoulder. “Ugleeuh is scary. She lies a lot and there's no telling what she's really capable of, especially if she is Bailitheoir Cailli.”

  On they went, falling silent as they walked, frequently breaking into jogging strides, crunching underfoot the yellow prematurely fallen peppermint tree leaves speckling their path. “We're making good time,” she said after a good long while. “At least I think we're making much better time than we did with Ugleeuh. We'll be at the foot of the mountain before long.”

  Lukus slowed, walking in the weeds beside the path while she caught up. “This still isn't fast enough to suit me,” he said. “You can't believe how fast we went on her broom when she came and got me out of the woods. I guess the path is faster than walking straight through the brush, but I'll bet the volcano's one of the first places she'll look, since she knows we've been there before. I'd feel better if we took to the woods somewhere along here.”

  “Makes sense. Well any place that looks good to you, have do,” she said, pausing long enough to remove with a stick some woods creature's dung from in front of her heel. She hiked her skirt and ran to catch up. “I suppose we might run across our poor unicorns, if we get lucky.”

  “Fat chance. They're probably not even alive.”

  “Bet they are. Ugleeuh probably fancies they owe her, so she probably hasn't done anything to them, other than make them miserable. They might even still have our packs, for all you know, and we had at least another two or three weeks of dried rations in them.”

  “Right,” said Lukus. “But wishful thinking aside, what do you suggest about food, when we actually get far enough to think about it?”

  “Ugleeuh said there were lots of animals in the woods here, so do you think you could make traps?”

  “I suppose. I still have my knife. Later, though. We still ought to make tracks. We ought to get clean away from here and well hidden before we even begin to think about food. How about taking off from the path right about here?”

  “I'm right behind you.”

  “Help me keep an eye on the trees, Rose. If we run out of peppermint trees, stop me. We don't want to die from Grandfather's spell.” With that he began covering ground with a vengeance, heading straight east to avoid following any obvious features of the land.

  The ravines got deeper and more tangled with brush and vines, while the hills became steeper and difficult to climb. As they skidded down the side of the steepest hogback yet, lunging from peppermint sapling to peppermint sapling to keep from falling, they saw that the bottom opened into a spacious dell instead going up the side of another steep hill. Utterly exhausted, they clambered onto a large sandstone rock jutting out of the bottom of the bank and sat there, catching their breaths. “Lukus, I'm spent,” said Rose.

  “You and me both.”

  “The afternoon is really starting to wane. Do you reckon that she's started after us, yet?”

  “I sure hope not. But we might be in luck. There seem to be rock outcroppings all around the hills facing the dell here, at least along this side. There could very well be some caves or overhangs we could get under,” he said, wearily heaving himself onto his feet. “If Ugleeuh's on her way, there's no way we can rest until we find something to hide under.”

  “You're quite right,” said Rose with a groan. “I'm getting up now.” They began skirting the foot of the facing hill. In a few minutes they had indeed found a sandstone overhang big enough to get under. They clambered back against it's inside wall at once and sank to the ground. “Those weeds are good,” she said. “I bet they make it so that no one would notice us sitting back here.”

  “Now I am hungry,” he said. “A snare or something, aye?”

  “I guess. If there are lots of creatures, we just need to trap one.”

  “Yea? Well what kind? I've only seen that one dragon and heard some mint owls and a few fiddly little birds so far all summer, but I've hardly been out.”

  “Hush! Lukus look!” she said, dropp
ing to a faint whisper as she pointed out through the weeds. “Speaking of the Pitmaster, it's huge.” Before them sat a rabbit, busily nibbling at a clump of tiny blue asters.

  “Fat is right. What I don't understand is why it's there. Why hasn't our arrival or our talking scared it? Rose, don't move.” Slowly, fluidly, he eased off his shoes and rose like a mushroom pushing up through the leaves after a rain. On his way up, he saw to his delight the rabbit shift aside where it was eating, turning its back towards them. He grew forward each time it put its nose down to nibble and fairly turned to stone when it raised its chin to chew. After an impossibly long spell, he stood over it, hunting for his moment. Suddenly he collapsed upon it. To his sheer disbelief he had a firm hold, though he had quite a grapple to stop it from kicking deep scratches into his arm.

  In the midst of his struggle something alive shot between his legs, startling him enough to cause him to stumble backwards into the bed of asters. He got to his feet, trying to get a glimpse of the creature which was still shooting back and forth about the feet of the nearby trees. Without warning, a beefy snake flopped to a halt in the leaves before him. It inched forward along its own zigzagging length, pausing to peer fluidly, first at him and then at Rose, as it flicked in and out its glistening black tongue. “Sspring iss my friend,” it hissed. “Why did you grab him?”

  “You talk!” cried Lukus as he stepped back wide eyed from the serpent.

  “We all do here,” said the snake. “Thiss iss an enchanted foresst, after all. Have you met Ugleeuh?”

  Rose and Lukus nodded.

  “Asth part of her enchantment of uss, sshe made scertain that all the animalsses in the woodss could undersstand her demandsses and exthplain themsselvesses to her.”

  “Ugleeuh again,” said Rose. “Has anything in this forest not been tampered with by her?”

  “Probably not, ssweetheart,” said the snake. “Ugleeuh ssimply controlss all the foresst and everything in it. It iss not wisze to defy her. But you two have not ansswered my quesstion. Why have you captured my friend, Sspring?”